FRDB Archives

Freethought & Rationalism Archive

The archives are read only.


Go Back   FRDB Archives > Archives > Religion (Closed) > Biblical Criticism & History
Welcome, Peter Kirby.
You last visited: Today at 03:12 PM

 
 
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Old 08-25-2009, 10:46 AM   #1
Contributor
 
Join Date: Jun 2000
Location: Los Angeles area
Posts: 40,549
Default Historiographical Jesus: the latest attempt to find a reflection of Jesus

The Historiographical Jesus: Memory, Typology, and the Son of David (or via: amazon.co.uk) by Anthony Le Donne

Quote:
About the Author

Anthony Le Donne (Ph.D. Durham University) is the author of Historical Jesus: A Postmodern Paradigm (Eerdmans, 2010). He lives in Loomis, California.
I first found a reference to this new book on April DeConick's forbiddengospels blog.
Quote:
.... It is pioneering, taking seriously the study of social memory and applying it to what Le Donne thinks we can and can't say the Jesus traditions.

Refreshingly he establishes himself as an historian who is not trying to get back to "unrefracted memory" (that is, what actually happened), but to account for the earliest memory refractions in Jesus' story. So "authenticity" and "historicity" are redefined to point to earliest memories of Jesus and Le Donne maps out the criteria that he uses to pick up this information.
So, as a post modern scholars do, Le Donne has given up all hope of finding the actual truth, but hopes to find something that is more reliable than story telling or myth, which he wants to call "social memory."

Now Jim West has started to review it here. He makes what I would consider to be an obvious point:
Quote:
Indeed, it’s quite possible for memory to be distorted intentionally or unintentionally so that the trajectory from which it came is utterly and completely obscured, and lost.
In fact, psychologists who study memory have found that it is easy to create memories, using simple suggestions (no diabolical hypnosis is needed.)

I see this approach going nowhere as far as finding a historical Jesus, but the people who write about it can be interesting.
Toto is offline  
Old 08-25-2009, 12:18 PM   #2
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: N/A
Posts: 4,370
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Toto View Post
So, as a post modern scholars do, Le Donne has given up all hope of finding the actual truth...
Cynic that I am, I tend to wonder whether they apply the same principles to their bank statements? "$200 in the red? Ah, but who knows whether that is really a truth at all..."
Roger Pearse is offline  
Old 08-27-2009, 12:21 PM   #3
Contributor
 
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: London UK
Posts: 16,024
Default

But money is a classic example of post modernism and myth and belief and faith. What does "I promise to pay the bearer..." mean?
Clivedurdle is offline  
Old 08-29-2009, 04:49 AM   #4
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Mondcivitan Republic
Posts: 2,550
Default

It makes me laugh a bit when I see how worked up folks get when they are reminded that "history" is what WE think happened, and not concrete representations of what ACTUALLY happened. Postmodernists sometimes call the latter POV "naive realism." The reality is that at any one moment historical facts are always interpreted in relation to the present, and that perception of the present is the collective memory of a large and varied population of individuals, each with different individual experiences.

The same events can be "witnessed" from numerous perspectives. Ask a grandparent about WW2: For one it was about Europe & the Atlantic Ocean, for another Asia and the Pacific ocean. For yet others, it was about internment (Japanese Americans), or concentration and death camps (Nazi occupied anywhere, or Japanese occupied anywhere, or Soviet occupied anywhere). For many Japanese in the Pacific theater it was about honor or patriotism. For many Americans it was about revenge for the Pearl Harbor sneak attack during peacetime. Actor/Director Clint Eastwood, no namby pamby relativist liberal kook by any means, recognized this by creating two very different movies about the battle for Iwo Jima near the end of WW2, one from the POV of American soldiers and another from the POV of the Japanese soldiers. If he can do that, then so can we.

Even before time has erased much of the details (records decay and are destroyed, buildings get replaced or are crumbled away), the primary facts have already been processed into secondary myths, victors tweak the story to make their POV the "right" one, and even survivors of the opposition tweak their POV so it can be preserved as a "justified" one, even in defeat. Lets all just be careful not to let the myths that have fermented a life of their own from the facts obscure what we can really know about figures from history.

DCH

Quote:
Originally Posted by Toto View Post
The Historiographical Jesus: Memory, Typology, and the Son of David (or via: amazon.co.uk) by Anthony Le Donne

Quote:
About the Author

Anthony Le Donne (Ph.D. Durham University) is the author of Historical Jesus: A Postmodern Paradigm (Eerdmans, 2010). He lives in Loomis, California.
I first found a reference to this new book on April DeConick's forbiddengospels blog.

So, as a post modern scholars do, Le Donne has given up all hope of finding the actual truth, but hopes to find something that is more reliable than story telling or myth, which he wants to call "social memory."

Now Jim West has started to review it here. He makes what I would consider to be an obvious point:
Quote:
Indeed, it’s quite possible for memory to be distorted intentionally or unintentionally so that the trajectory from which it came is utterly and completely obscured, and lost.
In fact, psychologists who study memory have found that it is easy to create memories, using simple suggestions (no diabolical hypnosis is needed.)

I see this approach going nowhere as far as finding a historical Jesus, but the people who write about it can be interesting.
DCHindley is offline  
 

Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -8. The time now is 09:12 PM.

Top

This custom BB emulates vBulletin® Version 3.8.2
Copyright ©2000 - 2015, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.